Halo: The Master Chief Collection Gets the Attention It Deserves Three Years Later

Man, I remember first hearing about Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It sounded like the holy grail for Xbox fans. All that Halo goodness brought to Xbox One with better graphics. Online multiplayer from Halo: Combat Evolved to Halo 4. It would be the perfect remaster. Then, it launched.

Halo 2 Anniversary was awesome. Blur’s cutscenes were fantastic. But the good times didn’t last long. Technical issues were, and still are, rampant. What should have been a haven for Halo fans soon turned to a ghost town.

Halo: Master Chief Collection was a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many developers working on too many different things. It all came together in a clunky package with busted matchmaking. A series of patches fixed many of the matchmaking headaches, but the problems with the game went beyond that.

343 Industries recommits to fixing Halo: Master Chief Collection

More than two years after the last patch, 343 Industries gave classic Halo fans hope this week. The Master Chief Collection will get fixed. And, it will get an update to take advantage of all the new horsepower Xbox One X has to offer.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection will receive enhancements for Xbox One X, as well as fixes, improvements and upgrades to the core game to help bring it forward and modernize many of the game’s systems to take advantage of Xbox platform advancements since its original launch.

But 343 also acknowledges, “it’s not going to be easy nor is it going to happen overnight.” The devs’ plan is to launch public “flighting” program to push “iterative patches and updates while testing in the wild at large scale.”

The plan is to get this program up and running next spring. Once it’s live, players can help 343 fix all the issues with Halo: The Master Chief Collection and make it better.

I have no problems jumping back in The Master Chief Collection once they fix it. And add the 4K patch. It’ll be more than three years by the time the game’s fixed, but I’ll give 343 some props. It would have been easy enough to just keep ignoring The Master Chief Collection. Fixing it will generate some goodwill. Even if it is long overdue.

We’ve seen plenty of developers stumble and come back better than ever. I hope all this work leads to Halo 6 bringing the franchise back to its glory days. A strong Halo is only a good thing for the industry.